In a statement, the firm said, “We hold ourselves to the highest legal and ethical standards. The behavior as described is unacceptable to DLA Piper and our clients. The emails were in fact an offensive and inexcusable effort at humor, but in no way reflect actual excessive billing.”

The memo was purportedly to help attorneys address concerns from clients and notes in part, “While we will make no effort to defend the foolish emails generated by the lawyers involved in this matter, we will defend vigorously the firm’s track record of delivering high-quality legal services at a fair price, including the reasonable fees generated in the matter in question.”

The response from DLA Piper follows coverage of claims by onetime DLA client Adam Victor, who has accused the firm of deliberately overbilling on a bankruptcy case for one of his companies. The litigation was initiated by DLA Piper, which took Victor to court for failure to pay $679,000 in legal fees. Victor filed counterclaims alleging overbilling.